


Not So Cruel

by shelara



Category: NCIS
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:58:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8884837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelara/pseuds/shelara
Summary: Tony is shot and Gibbs is breaking into pieces.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am in need of a beta... contact me on LJ (Shelara00) if you're interested.

\---

The shot rang out loud and clear in the crisp night air.

Gibbs saw Tony crumple out of the corner of his eye, heard the loud ‘Umphh!’ as he went down, arms splayed out, gun clattering away to one side. 

‘Hurts like a bitch,’ Gibbs thought, recalling all the times he had been hit in the vest. He put two in the suspect with a sweet sort of satisfaction that was probably a bit inappropriate, probably something his therapist would want to talk about if she knew. 

The man went down and stayed down. No vest, no chance. ‘That’s what you get for shooting my agent,’ Gibbs thinks grimly.

When he is sure the man is gone, he turns, expecting Tony to be catching up, complaining about bruised ribs. 

Instead panic sets in when he realizes Tony is still on the ground, not moving. When he realizes a pool of blood is forming around his Tony. 

\---

Tony is sputtering, blood leaking out of his mouth. The EMT has his vest off, his shirt is gone. The EMT is placing tubes and sticking gauze in the hole under Tony’s arm. Damn bullet just missed the vest, pierced his armpit at an angle. There is no exit wound that Gibbs can see.

The ambulance isn’t moving fast enough for Gibbs' liking. “Move this bus!” he bellows through the partition at the driver. The driver doesn’t spare him a glance, just stomps on the gas and slides them through another red light. 

“Easy, Boss,” Tony is saying, his voice low. “No backseat driving.”

So Gibbs drops back onto the bench and clasps Tony’s hand again. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“I’m not dying,” Tony says.

“Damn straight!” Gibbs replies, his anxiety making his voice crack. He grips Tony’s hand with perhaps too much force.

“If I were dying,” Tony says, and Gibbs really doesn’t like the macabre conversation, but Tony is Tony and when does Tony ever shut up?

“If I were dying,” Tony repeats. “I’d wait for you on the other side.” He is smiling a little, his eyes twinkling.

“You’re not dying,” Gibbs bites out. “Don’t talk like that.” Anger flares through him. Here they are, in an ambulance, Tony bleeding over everything, and Tony is teasing him! About dying! Then his anger dies just as quickly as it appeared as it dawns on him. 

Tony is scared. 

This isn’t teasing. This is Tony being Tony, hiding behind a smile and a joke. 

“You are NOT dying,” Gibbs says again, meeting Tony’s eyes, trying to convince him of that fact.

“I would,” Tony is saying, his voice softer now. “I’d wait for you.”

“I know,” Gibbs says, his voice breaking again. And he does know, even though they’ve never talked about this, about what they believe might or might not happen... after. “I know you would.”

Tony is smiling at him, a hint of moisture in his eyes, but then Gibbs frowns as he sees the smile fade, sees something dark take its place.

“What?” he asks, concerned. “What, Tony?” 

But Tony is shaking his head and now Gibbs recognizes that dark look. It’s fear--pure, unadulterated terror.

“I’d wait for you,” Tony says again, his voice not much more than a whisper. “But you’d go to them.” There is no recrimination in his voice - just an easy certainty.

Gibbs feels his jaw drop. And even though Tony is not is not is not dying, part of Gibbs is aware of just how much blood is in the ambulance. Of how much more of it they left on the pavement in a pool where Tony fell. And on the off chance that maybe Tony might possibly actually be dying just a little bit, Gibbs certainly isn’t going to let him die like this, not like this, not afraid that he’s about to be alone again, except alone for fucking eternity this time.

“That’s not how it works,” Gibbs says with a conviction that surprises him, that surprises Tony. “That’s not at all how it works.”

“No?” Tony asks, doubtful.

“No,” Gibbs says, squeezing his hand. “Shannon and Kelly are going to love you.”

“Oh,” Tony says, and Gibbs is gratified to see that dark look disappear, replaced by something almost tender, almost hopeful. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Gibbs repeats, smiling a little at his love, his second love. 

But then Tony is seizing and they are arriving at the hospital and the doctors and nurses are shouting and whisking him away.

\---


	2. Chapter 2

\--

Tony is in surgery. And while Gibbs is good at a great many things, surgery unfortunately isn’t one of them. He’s also not very good at waiting. But that’s what he’s doing when Ducky finds him. 

“Gibbs,” Ducky says, his voice questioning.

He raises a hand and points towards the operating room. “Surgery,” he says gruffly.

Ducky nods once and then marches off briskly to wrangle an update out of the trauma nurse. He returns looking paler than Gibbs would like.

“They’re still trying to find the bullet,” Ducky explains. He doesn’t have to explain that they should have found it by now.

Gibbs nods miserably. He can’t quite bring himself to meet Ducky’s gaze, choosing to stare at the floor near his feet instead.

“Come on,” Ducky says, taking hold of his shoulder. “Follow me.”

Gibbs lets Ducky lead him away to the staff locker room. He’s somewhat surprised to find he’s still decked out in all his tactical gear. Ducky produces a duffel bag - from where Gibbs has no idea - and stashes his helmet in it. His vest follows. Gibbs wonders faintly where his rifle is.

“McGee has your rifle,” Ducky says softly. He has helped Gibbs out of his bloodstained shirt and moved them to the sink. Now Ducky is scrubbing Tony’s blood from Gibbs’ arms and hands, scraping it out from where it has dried under his nails. 

Gibbs wonders how Ducky can sometimes read his mind. Or maybe he said it out loud… he really isn’t sure. All he can hear is his blood roaring in his ears, his heart clamoring away under his collarbone, his own breath rasping in his throat. All he can see is the sluice of water in the sink, red against the white ceramic. Tony is going down the drain and Gibbs wants to call him back. He opens his mouth to tell Ducky to stop, to leave Tony where he is, where he belongs, coated on his skin, but no words come out.

Gibbs tries again to speak, but finds he can’t move air out or in. His lungs appear to have mutinied. 

“Jethro?” Ducky asks, noticing his lack of breathing. “Jethro!” He pokes Gibbs hard in the ribs.

“Oomph!” Gibbs exhales. Then he immediately sucks in another breath. Exhales again. Inhales again. Exhale. Inhale. 

Ducky helps him to a nearby seat. “Jethro? Were you examined? Are you injured?”

Gibbs shakes his head and is mortified to feel tears sloshing around in his eyes at the movement. He tries to pull on a mask but finds he cannot. So he stares at Ducky instead, helpless to prevent Ducky seeing everything spelled out in his eyes, his love for Tony, his rising panic.

Ducky stares at his friend and a dozen tiny pieces finally fall into place, a dozen observations collected over the past several months suddenly make a whole lot more sense.

“Lady Fate is not so cruel,” Ducky declares, gripping Gibbs’ shoulder. “Do you hear me? She is not so cruel.”

“Wha?” Gibbs manages to strangle out. 

Ducky sighs, helping him back to his feet. “Losing the love of your life once was bad luck,” he says, leading Gibbs back towards the waiting room. “It won’t happen again.”

Gibbs clings to his friend and clings to that one tiny shred of hope. 

Maybe, just maybe, he has already suffered enough for one lifetime.

\--


	3. Chapter 3

Gibbs is at Tony’s side the moment he is out of surgery. Tony is pale and somehow too small in the hospital bed. But the bullet is out and his major organs are intact. He’s still pretty far under, so a ventilator is helping him breathe.

When a nurse dares to try to pull him away, he turns his best death glare on her. But she’s a trauma nurse and so she’s as tough as he is, maybe tougher. He may be a Marine and a combat veteran, but she’s spent every goddamn day of the past twenty years of her working life in the trenches. She puts her hands on her hips and stands her ground.

“You can’t stay in here,” she says. “I told you five minutes and it’s been ten.”

Gibbs turns the death glare off. He looks at Tony and then back at the nurse. “Please,” he says again, not recognizing the pleading voice as his own, surprised to find the liquid back in his eyes. “He -- he’s my -- my everything.”

Something in the nurse’s stance softens. She may be battle hardened, but she is not immune to his grief. “You need to let us do our work,” she says kindly, taking Gibbs by the arms and pulling him towards the hallway. She places him with his back against the wall, just inside the door. “Watch from here. Stay out of the way.”

He accepts her orders, standing stockstill where she put him, his eyes never leaving Tony as the nurses work to get him off the ventilator. He can’t help his mind drifting back over the last few years. 

It hadn’t always been like this. It wasn’t love at first sight or anything like that - at least it hadn’t been for Gibbs. Maybe for Tony it had been, but Gibbs had never asked. 

Gibbs wasn’t sure when he fell in love with Tony but he suspected it was something that happened bit by bit, something that couldn’t be pinned down to a particular moment in time. He had often scrolled back through his memories of their years together, trying, always without success, to find the delineation between Before and After. 

He had, of course, known for a long time that Tony had been carrying a torch for him. Years maybe. But he had simply ignored that fact. After three ex-wives he had sworn himself off relationships. And besides, Tony could certainly do better than an old Marine who only managed to get out of bed everyday because he had built a steel cage around the shattered remnants of his broken heart. 

But where his ex-wives had banged their fists against the steel and demanded that Gibbs let them in, Tony had done the opposite. He hadn’t pushed, hadn’t demanded anything from Gibbs, just stood at his side and held the torch close. 

It took ten years, but Gibbs’ heart-cage melted under that heat. 

Gibbs had, of course, been horrified to feel it happening. He had rushed to hide his brokenness from Tony, to disguise the painful shards once again free to slice into his chest. Tony saw them anyway and did what he had always done - held the torch close. 

And wouldn’t you know -- the same torch that could melt steel could fuse glass.

Gibbs had been so surprised to feel the pieces lose their jagged edges, to feel his heart start to mend. He was not -- would never be -- whole, but nowadays he got out of bed lighter than he had in years, his heart bound up not in steel but in Tony’s love. 

He is brought back to the present as the nurses finish their work. The one who had manhandled him to the wall earlier now leads him gently by the elbow back to the bedside chair. She squeezes his shoulder briefly as she leaves. 

Gibbs takes Tony’s hand in his, startled by the cold clammy feel of his lover’s skin. He swallows, pushing down the panic roiling in his gut. He can’t lose Tony too. 

“Tony,” he whispers into the silence. “You'll never have to wait for me. If you have to go, I’ll follow you, sweetheart, I’ll follow you anywhere.”

\--


End file.
